The 70th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade was a

Soviet Ground Forces The Soviet Ground Forces () was the land warfare service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1946 to 1992. It was preceded by the Red Army. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991, the Ground Forces remained under th ...

mechanized infantry brigade of the

Soviet–Afghan War The Soviet–Afghan War took place in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from December 1979 to February 1989. Marking the beginning of the 46-year-long Afghan conflict, it saw the Soviet Union and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic o ...

. During the war, it was based in

Kandahar Kandahar is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city, after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118 in 2015. It is the capital of Kandahar Pro ...

First Formation

The brigade was formed on 1 March 1980 in Kandahar from the 373rd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment of the

5th Guards Motor Rifle Division The 5th Guards ''Zimovnikovskaya'' order Kutuzov II degree Motor Rifle Division, (Military Unit Number (V/Ch) 51852 from 1979) named on the 60th anniversary of the USSR, was a military formation of the Soviet Ground Forces. It was formed from the ...

. On 4 May 1985, it was awarded a second

Order of the Red Banner The Order of the Red Banner () was the first Soviet military decoration. The Order was established on 16 September 1918, during the Russian Civil War by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. It was the highest award of S ...

for its actions in Afghanistan. In August 1988, it withdrew to Kushka. The brigade was disbanded in February 1989.

Second Formation

The

17th Guards Rifle Division The 17th Guards Rifle Division (Russian: 17-я гвардейская стрелковая дивизия) was an infantry division of the Red Army during World War II. It was created on March 17, 1942, from the first formation of the 119th Rifle ...

became the 123rd Guards Motor Rifle Division in 1957 and converted into the 129th Guards Machine-Gun Artillery Division in 1989. With the

collapse of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...

, it became a

Russian Ground Forces The Russian Ground Forces (), also known as the Russian Army in English, are the Army, land forces of the Russian Armed Forces. The primary responsibilities of the Russian Ground Forces are the protection of the state borders, combat on land, ...

formation in May 1992. In 2001, it was converted to the 17th Guards Motor Rifle Division, and became the 70th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade in 2009. The brigade is currently based in

Ussuriysk Ussuriysk () is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in Primorsky Krai, Russia, in the valley of the Razdolnaya River. The city is north of Vladivostok, the administrative center of the krai, and about from both the China–Russia bo ...

References

External links

Website dedicated to the brigade
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220402021010/http://www.kandagar.su/ , date=2022-04-02 Ground Forces brigades of the Soviet Union Mechanised brigades Military units and formations established in 1979 Military units and formations awarded the Order of the Red Banner